119
No.
1
91.
HONGKONG.
DESPATCHES RESPECTING PRISON ACCOMMODATION.
Presented to the Legislative Council, by Command of His Excellency the Governor.
(Secretary of State to Officer Administering the Government.)
HONGKONG.
No. 273.
SIR,
DOWNING STREET,
21st November, 1890.
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 334 of the 16th of September submitting, with your own comments, a report by the Surveyor General upon the best mode of increasing and improving the prison accommodation of the Colony.
2. Three alternative plans are suggested by Mr. BROWN, and are considered in your despatch, viz.: additions to and modifications of the present building, the construction of one new block on another site, and the construction of a whole prison on a new site.
You incline to the first plan as most likely to be in harmony with the wishes of the community, and I wish I could bring myself to sanction it if only for the reason that the delay has already been so great that any scheme which is likely to be pushed forward quickly has on that ground much to commend it.
3. The objections, however, to enlarging the present gaol, to some of which Mr. BROWN calls attention, seem on full consideration to be insuperable. The two evils which it is wished to remedy, viz.: overcrowding and association, would, under it, still continue. For the crowding of prisoners in the building would be substituted crowding of buildings on the site; out buildings of low elevation, which do not seriously impede the circulation of air, would be pulled down, and the area thus cleared, with a still larger space, would be filled by a large three-storied block, shutting out all light and air and absorbing the space used for exercising yards, work-shops and other essentials-the prison thus made consisting of a number of large blocks separated by alley ways from 20 to 25 feet wide. Again a large number of the prisoners would still be kept in associated wards, and as it is considered that separation would be especially effective in the case of Chinese, an arrangement which after considerable expenditure would still fail in great measure to secure this object cannot be considered satisfactory.
4. I have accordingly come to the conclusion that the whole or part of a new prison must be built upon a fresh site, and I consider that the second plan suggested by Mr. BROWN should be adopted and that a block should be built, providing separate accommodation for (say) 200 or 250 prisoners, avowedly only